[…] we are pleased to present Eris, a platform which allows developers and users to deploy consensus driven applications which rely on decentralized architecture and a consensus driven blockchain database backend. Eris is meant to be an adaptable software package which is designed to be modular, easily copied, and easily modified – and therefore used in many different applications. We intend to use Eris as the relevant platform when we incorporate the Association at a later date, but we will not be limiting future development of the platform to that single application.

Eris is a completely serverless product built on a backbone of other products which we have designed and built over the course of the last five months. It is our intention that ÐAOs implemented using the Eris framework will serve as technology demonstrators for a new kind of decentralised and consensus-based organisational governance, on a fully transparent and trustless basis, which to our knowledge has never before been attempted. Our primary goal is not only to design demonstrators which work on the blockchain but have no ability to be used in the real world by real users. Indeed, one of our overarching design goals is to continue to design and build ÐAOs in such a way that they abide in full compliance with legal and regulatory obligations.

We set out below the types of functions we have incorporated in Eris version 0.1; we have built it to be coupled with a real-world legal entity, ideally a non-profit, so that such organisations can benefit from the significant efficiencies which blockchain and cryptographic technologies enable while still complying with the legal formalities and necessities of the jurisdictions in which they operate and any related enforcement mechanisms such as court orders. […]

The views of the three founders of Project Ðouglas on the subject are not uniform. However, where we all agree is that we are willing to set those differences aside to launch a smart contract platform which is useful in everyday applications, for reasons that are so familiar to us that they do not bear repeating here.

Reblogged this on Preston Byrne and commented:
I remember being 21 years old, fresh out of university and moving to London and thinking: “what the hell am I going to do with my life?” Then you see people excited and writing about something novel you’ve helped to build.
And it all starts to make sense.